Summer

Nectarines make a particularly enticing summertime granita that definitely merits precious freezer space as the temperature climbs. I patiently wait and wait for the first of the sweetest-smelling nectarines to appear, and then bang—I hit the markets, buying as many as I can. Try serving this granita surrounded by a mixture of raspberries, blueberries, and sliced strawberries sweetened with a touch of honey.

If you’ve ever gone shopping at the Fairway Market on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, you’ve found that the simple act of buying a good basket of strawberries has become a full-contact sport. Never in my life have I left a market with so many bumps and bruises! Next time I go, I’m wearing football gear to protect myself from the combative shoppers who wield their carts like modern-day jousting vehicles, ready to take on any and all oncoming produce shoppers who might happen to be heading toward the basket of berries they’ve set their sights on. If you think this is just an East Coast phenomenon, you should visit the Berkeley Bowl, in California, where people who’ve just parked their Volvos with fading “Make Love, Not War” bumper stickers are more than happy to hike up their drawstring pants and trample you with their Birkenstocks while homing in on their berries. But no matter where you live, I recommend that you take the trouble and assume all risks to find good strawberries with which to make this intensely flavored sorbet at home, where you’re safe and sound.

I’m insatiable when it comes to fresh cherries, and I eat pounds and pounds of them right off the stem during their ridiculously brief season, which I’m convinced is one of nature’s cruelest acts. But their characteristic flavor really becomes pronounced when warmed, so I sauté them first to deepen their luxurious flavor. Be sure to start with full-flavored, very dark cherries, like plump Burlat cherries or blackish red Bings.

One of the funniest (albeit most excruciating) things I’ve ever seen was a videotaped appearance of a cookbook author making a rhubarb pie on a live morning television show. Just as the cameras began rolling, the cocky, self-assured host looked at his guest and blurted out, “I hate rhubarb. I mean, I really hate it.” The poor dear continued to make her rhubarb pie, but it was easy to see that his constant grousing was taking its toll on her as she baked, bantered, and defended her delicious-looking pie for a few painful on-air minutes. If it were me, I would have taken a different approach. With the cameras rolling, I would have ordered him out of the studio and pulled another person into the kitchen who looked forward to the first rhubarb in the spring with the same anticipation that I do. Look for stalks that are bright red, which will make the most enticingly colored sorbet. The flavor of the gently stewed ruhubarb with fresh strawberries will remind you why this combination is so beloved by almost everyone, including me.

I was twenty years old when I tasted my first fresh apricot. I was baking in a restaurant in upstate New York, and one day the produce person handed me a small paper sack of dewy orange orbs. I’d eaten many a dried apricot in my lifetime but had neither seen nor tasted a fresh one, and frankly, I didn’t know what to do with them. Since I had just a handful, I made one singularly gorgeous apricot tart that I kept away from prying hands (the greatest hazard for the pastry chef in any professional kitchen), slicing it carefully so eight lucky customers were able to have a taste. My first summer in California, I was amazed at how many fresh apricots there were and thought that the stacks of crates at the market were a one-time windfall. So I started hoarding them, making as many things as I could before they disappeared forever. Or so I thought. When next year rolled around and the cases of apricots started stacking up again, I learned that they were actually quite common and rather prolific. But to this day, when they’re in season I try to use as many as I can, still mindful of how precious each and every silky-soft apricot is. And don’t be put off by apricots that are so ripe they feel like they’re ready to burst. That’s when they’re at their best.

Plums are the last of the summer fruits to arrive, and they stay around long enough to welcome in the fall. Having a batch of this sorbet in the freezer is the perfect way to extend the warm glow of summer just a few more weeks.

There’s a curious custom in Gascony, a region in the southwest of France known for its full-bodied red wines (its famous neighbor is Bordeaux). When they’ve just about finished their soup, the locals tip a little bit of the red wine from their glass into their soup bowl, mingling the wine with the last few spoonfuls of the broth. I later discovered that this custom is equally good with a goblet of sorbet when I was scrambling to figure out a way to make this rosy nectarine sorbet a bit more special for an impromptu dinner party. I simply scooped sorbet into my guests’ wine glasses at the table and let them pour in as little (or as much) red wine as they wished. It was a big success. If you have time to think ahead, prepare a big bowl of sweet, juicy berries and sliced nectarines, and let your guests add some fruit to their sorbet too.

My friend Susan Loomis says that finding a perfect melon is like finding love—you need to try many before you land just the right one. The best way to pick one (a melon, that is) is to find one that has lots of netting around the outside and a sweet and delicious smell. Follow those tips, and there’s no doubt that you’ll fall head over heels for this simple sorbet that makes excellent use of the fragrant melons that are available during the summer months.

I wouldn’t dream of visiting the vast Central Market in Florence without my friend Judy Witts, known throughout town as the Divina Cucina. With Judy as my guide, butchers and cheese merchants greet us like given-up-for-lost family members, and everywhere we turn another oversized platter appears, heaped with Tuscan delights: sheep’s-milk pecorino, candied fruits spiced with mustard seeds, fresh raspberries dotted with syrupy balsamic vinegar, and, gulp, juicy tripe sandwiches (which I haven’t built up the courage to try). And because we’re in Italy, it all ends with shots of grappa taken straight from little glass vials, obbligatorio after all that sampling. This sorbetto is adapted from Judy’s recipe. One of her favorite parts is the little chocolate “seeds” it contains. Since watermelons have a lot of water, take the sorbetto out of the freezer long enough ahead of serving to make it scoopable, 5 to 10 minutes. To pass the time, serve shots of grappa, and if there’s any left by serving time, splash some over the sorbetto too.

This frozen yogurt is a snap to put together, especially welcome in the summer which is when you may want to limit your time in a warm kitchen. But don’t let its ease of preparation fool you; this vibrantly colored frozen yogurt provides the biggest blast of strawberry flavor imaginable.

This is the first ice cream that springs to mind when people recall hand-cranked, old-fashioned fruit ice creams from their past. More than any other homemade ice cream, this is perhaps the most beloved of all flavors and is indeed best when spooned right out of the machine, just moments after it’s been churned. An easy way to peel peaches is to cut an X at the bottom and then lower them in a pot of boiling water for about 20 seconds. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the peaches to a colander and shock them with cold water, then let them cool. Afterward, you’ll find their fuzzy peels just slip right off.

Brilliant pink fresh strawberry ice cream is a classic flavor and, along with chocolate and vanilla, is an American favorite. I’m a big fan of any kind of berries served with tangy sour cream, but I think strawberries are the most delicious, especially when frozen into a soft, rosy red scoop of ice cream. Macerating the strawberries beforehand magically transforms even so-so berries into fruits that are brilliantly red. Try to eat this ice cream soon after it’s been churned.

Unlike some of the other frozen yogurts in this book, I only make this with plain, unstrained yogurt. Since the peach purée is so velvety thick, this frozen yogurt has a lovely consistency when frozen.

Surprisingly, a lot of people have never seen a fresh fig. When they do, they invariably ask, “What is that?” Indeed, a majority of the fig harvest gets dried and made into the familiar bar cookies. But fresh figs have a sweet succulence that is unmatched by their dried counterparts. A fig is ripe when the sides crack and split and a dewy drop of juice starts to ooze from the tiny hole in the bottom. Once picked, figs don’t ripen any more, so buy only figs that are dead-ripe. For best results, use Black Mission figs, which will give the ice cream a lovely deep-violet color.

If you’re lucky enough to live in an area where fresh apricots are bountiful in the summer, be sure to take advantage of their brief season by churning up a batch of this ice cream. Don’t be put off by apricots that are übersoft, as plump and fragile as an overfilled water balloon, seemingly ready to burst at the slightest touch. Those are invariably the best-tasting fruits.

For many years, I was delighted to work with Lindsey Shere, the founding pastry chef at Chez Panisse. She was constantly surprising us with amazing fruits and berries from neighbors’ backyards and nearby farms. Without fail, Lindsey would come in one weekend each summer carrying a big plastic Tupperware container, which, due to its distinctive rounded shape, left no question that it was precisely designed to hold a canned ham. But instead of a ham, inside would be a jumble of tiny, tender, smushed wild plums picked by her mother. Eaten raw, they were puckery-tart, but once stewed, they made an incredibly flavorful plum ice cream. Each year I would wait patiently for that one late-summer weekend when Lindsey would walk though the door lugging her now-infamous canned ham container. Although wild plums may be hard to come by, you can use whatever plums are available with equal success.

What do you say when a nice Jewish boy gives up a promising career as a lawyer to become a self-appointed “amateur gourmet”? (“Oy!” his mom probably said.) When the audacious amateur himself, Adam Roberts, used my recipe for Strawberry Frozen Yogurt (page 91) as inspiration for churning up a batch of Sour Cherry Frozen Yogurt, he posted the results on his web site, www.amateurgourmet.com. It was an idea too delicious not to include in this book. However, when pressed for minor details like, say, a recipe or exact quantities, Adam played the amateur card and feigned ignorance, forcing a certain professional to do his duty. This recipe calls for sour cherries, which are different from their sweeter counterparts and sometimes require a bit of foraging to find (Adam found his at Manhattan’s Greenmarket). Their tiny little pits can easily be slipped out by squeezing the cherries with your fingers or with the help of a cherry pitter.

In my humble opinion, red plums make the best preserves, and certainly one of the easiest. Their skins give the jam a pleasant tartness and contain so much pectin that even inexperienced jam makers will be blushing like rosy plums with the pride of success. Tossing the fruit with sugar and letting it stand for a few hours intensifies the color of the strawberries so that the jam cooks up with a vivid crimson color.

Figs have two seasons—the first figs appear in late summer and the second batch shows up around mid-autumn. If you miss the first one, not to worry—the second is usually more prolific and the figs are even tastier. Don’t be put off by fresh figs with skins that are split and syrupy; those are the ones that taste the best. For jam making, I like black Mission figs, which are the most common variety, but this recipe will work with others as well. Figs are high in natural sugar, which means that the jam cooks relatively quickly.

The best strawberry sauce is made from the ripest strawberries. Look for ones that are red from top to bottom and all the way through to the core. If you take a sniff, they should smell like, well, ripe, sweet, strawberries. I don’t always strain out all the seeds since I sometimes like their texture and appearance in the sauce.